To display static and moving images to large crowds of people, both indoors and outdoors, a technology is available, which can provide screen sizes from up to 20 meters wide and beyond, with sufficient brightness to be used in bright sunshine. Typically, a well suited and widely used technology for these outdoor displays is based on utilizing light emitting diodes, LEDs, as the light-emitting devices. Such LED displays have been available for many years now and are the displays of choice currently installed in major sports and public venues around the world.
In recent times, a market has emerged for LED banner displays placed around a play court or a field of play at sports events that are used to display advertising targeted primarily at the large TV audience. The introduction of dynamic control of advertising using LED banner displays to replace traditional static billboards has significantly increased the advertising revenue generated within sports.
However, several controlling bodies (e.g. UEFA) remain sceptical about the performance of the LED banner displays that are available today citing the pixelisation of images as a major flaw when a camera zooms in close-up to the LED banner display. The image resolution is in such circumstances judged to be far inferior to the traditional static billboard signs. Accordingly they prefer higher resolution LED banner displays to be used at their events but the far higher purchase price of suitable displays cannot be justified and is not financially viable as it generates no additional revenue. It is for this latter market segment that the present inventive concept is particularly relevant, although it may be applied to any display. A LED banner display is typically used to inform and entertain the viewing public with a view to drawing their attention to the advertising content as a means of generating additional advertising revenue. For the attending public at the event, the LED banner display is sufficiently far away as to show a good quality image with no visible pixelisation to the naked eye. However, the true value of a LED banner display is only fully realized when the event is broadcast to a much larger viewing audience. Typically the camera will only be focused on a particular message for a short period of time, so the viewing audience must quickly be able to recognize the brand and the message contained in the advertisement for it to be fully effective. When the camera is zoomed in, the impact and the meaning of the displayed message may be lost, or become unclear, due to several potential weaknesses in the LED banner display, for example; pixelisation due to the relatively large pixel pitch; poor color reproduction if the color point is not set correctly; insufficient resolution to reproduce small details or text; poor contrast levels making the message unreadable, especially with direct sunlight on the display surface; too little or too high brightness level for the surroundings.
Furthermore, the actual message may be meaningless to the viewing audience at a particular location because it is actually targeted at another (local) viewing audience. The advertised product may not be available to the viewing audience at that location for many reasons.
The net benefit of the present inventive concept is that the same physical LED display banner area may be utilized to show different content in different localities that is meaningful to the audience in that locality. The locally targeted content may be from a different, locally recognized (international) brand, from the same international brand, but with a different but locally recognized, (similar) product, from the same international brand and the same product but with a different (local) message, for example, in the local language, from the same international brand but a different product.
In summary, there is a large commercial interest in techniques for substituting parts of an image of a sports scene with different advertisements directed to different audiences, as the advertising revenue per event can be significantly increased through targeted advertising.
Patent specification EP 1 362 476 B1 discloses identifying a surface of an object for dynamic content control by arranging a marking surface on the object or in its vicinity, which marking surface is identifiable on the basis of radiation differing from its environment on the basis of a property other than the color of visible light.